


Stopping Time

by Gabrielle



Series: Clocks [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Dark, Disturbing, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 22:09:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabrielle/pseuds/Gabrielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*Final story in the Clocks series* Angel's soul is secure, but Willow remains.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One: Drusilla

Stopping Time: Part One: Drusilla

 

She had thought maybe the stars would forgive her in time, but they never did. Hers was a quiet world, a world of shadows and lonely rooms and a bed as chaste as the one she'd hoped to fill long ago when she had believed in God and longed to serve him.

From bride of heaven to bride of no one at all.

She missed her dollies and their chatter as well. After a time, she had thrown the rest of the them on the fire, knowing they were wood and wax and fabric and not her friends any longer. Miss Edith sat in safety in Daddy's bird's cage. Sometimes she wondered if Miss Edith had gotten her tongue back. The pretty little sparrow would dearly love a friend. But that friend would never be Drusilla, not now.

 

> _"What did you do?"_
> 
> There are tears falling like raindrops from leaves and Drusilla's heart melts like Marcie on the fire, but there's nothing for her but to wait for the tree to stake her.
> 
> It doesn't happen. The rain merely continues to fall and the little bird's wings flutter as she crashes to the ground. "Why?" she asks after a time.
> 
> "I love him," Drusilla answers.
> 
> "I hate you." Willow's words tear into Drusilla's heart like talons into warm flesh. But they both know she'd do nothing to change what is. Not even if she could. Because she can.

 

No, Drusilla did nothing to alter what she'd brought about. Sometimes a sly sort of sanity that wore Spike's clothes and spread his smile over her like jam on bread would come and ask questions she couldn't answer. All the questions began with 'why' and after that, Drusilla could not understand another word. She had never asked why before and it slipped through the knots in her mind and scampered away as if it were made of whirling dust.

Her boy, her besotted one…he was gone. She never wondered if he was looking for her. She didn't need the stars to whisper the truth: No one loved Drusilla anymore.

 

> _"Make her love me," Daddy roars, nearly tearing her door from its hinges as he bursts into her room. "You can do it. Make her love me."_
> 
> He's been with his cold dolly again. Drusilla can smell her tears and distance on Daddy's skin.
> 
> "I can't," she whispers, afraid of her Angel more than she has ever been, wishing she could find the tongue to tell a lie. Soon, she fears, she will burn like her dollies, but there's nothing to be done.
> 
> "You can. You have to." He sounds pleading now, even touches her. She marvels at the feel of her hands in his. His fingers are spiders, weaving a beseeching song out of the threads of her skin.
> 
> "I could make her believe she loves you for a little while…when you lie with her," she offers even as she knows it's nothing he wants. It's almost a pity. She could assuage her own sorrow at planting the poor tree in this garden of stones if she could somehow ease her suffering. If only she were able to make the little sparrow love the hawk who kept her…how much happier they all would be.
> 
> He says nothing, but she thinks she sees tears in her Daddy's eyes as he leaves her. It will be many long days before she hears his voice again.

 

That was one of the days when she thought of the things she _could_ do--of how she could give herself up to the dust by setting the caged bird free…of how she perhaps could undo her binding…of how she could bring the little one into the same dark world where she and Daddy lived their lifeless lives. She did none of those things; she would _do_ none of those things. She loved her Angel and she could do nothing that would go against his wishes. It was bare, cold safety and nothing more that he offered her, but for all that it wasn't, it _was_ safety, and in a silent, strange world, safety was diamonds and rubies strung on chains of blood and solace.

Willow would understand, she was sure.

 

> _"I'm sorry," she says softly as she tiptoes into the little girl's room. She can come in as she pleases, though she's only done so for the first time today. What are locks to such as she?_
> 
> Miss Edith is on the floor in the corner, bustle over teakettle - naughty, horrid thing. It seems her new Mommy could not make her behave.
> 
> Willow -- Drusilla keeps her name at the ready now, names are important -- says nothing, just looks off into nothingness and never bothers to gather the raindrops in her cistern.
> 
> She can smell the blood and Daddy's essence. Were her body Drusilla's, those scents would be evidence of pleasure, but the tree is not their kind and when she screams, it's no hymn of celebration sung to the demon gods. It is nothing but the anguish of emptiness and agony.
> 
> "Are you all right?" What a funny thing to ask. Drusilla's not sure she's ever strung those words together in such a fashion, but she's said them now and she can no more take them back than her human Mummy could have stuffed newborn Drusilla right back up into her belly.
> 
> Did she ever wish she could have?
> 
> It's a terrible, scourging thought and suddenly Willow is not the only one shedding tears. For the second time since she ripped the girl bleeding from the body of her peaceful world, she finds those soft, warm arms around her.
> 
> William knew words for this, but he never gave them to Drusilla.

 

Daddy was certainly able to tell she'd been in the room, but he never said a word. She knew what that meant and there was a time when that would have set the rage to roaring within her, but that hour had long since chimed and the little cuckoo was laying dead on the floor beneath the clock. She was a docile, broken thing now, just like Daddy's new princess…no more fear and fire and shaking mortals cowering at the sound of her name. She was a sinner in the hands of an angry Angel-god…and she knew her place.

 

> _They are all sitting at table. It's Willow's birthday again. Her name is a bright, beautiful thing today--it's shining from sparkly banners hung all about. "Happy Birthday, Willow," they scream in purple and red and orange and yellow. Drusilla thinks it's all so pretty and festive and she wishes the swirling ribbons and streamers could dance for the birthday girl and coax a smile from her as they do from Dru. She can't help herself--there's something about a party. _
> 
> She gets up and sings to herself, dancing away from her chair. It's not the same without the voices and their music, but twirling about is still pleasant and, more importantly, familiar. If she acts like the once-beloved favorite of the stars, perhaps they'll come home.
> 
> She tries not to look at the sad, turned-down corners of Willow's mouth or the irritation in her Angel's eyes. She just keeps dancing. Perhaps on *her* birthday, a prezzie will come. Until then, she will lick the crumbs from Daddy's plate. She's a good girl and never forgets that she's lucky to get any dinner at all.
> 
> When the party is over, and the cake is gone, it's Daddy's turn to unwrap *his* present. Soon there will be screams.
> 
> Willow is crying as they leave Drusilla alone in the beautiful room. She fills her mind with candy canes and she just keeps dancing.

 

End Drusilla


	2. Part Two: Angel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel's soul is secure, but Willow remains.

Stopping Time: Part Two: Angel

 

After another year, after everything that had changed, it still didn't matter that she didn't love him; it would always be enough for _him_ to love _her_. He'd told himself, though, that it would stop hurting. He'd been wrong about that.

It ached and burned and scored his flesh, the hatred and loathing he could feel through the pores of her skin. Yet…he wouldn't change a thing he'd done, nothing he was going to do either. If this was his eternity, it might be unbearable, but he would bear it all the same.

 

> _He's inside her, artificial lubricant doing its best to ease his passage into a body so very unwilling to take him._
> 
> _"I love you," he whispers, though he knows she won't hear him through her tears and cries. She wouldn't care even if she *did* hear him; he knows that. That fact doesn't stop him from saying it, though--over and over again. It's the truth, after all, no matter that she refuses to believe it._
> 
> _"I love you." He keeps saying it. It becomes part of the rhythm that drives him -- thrust after thrust -- urging him on as he reaches for completion, and then he's there. Spilling himself inside her, he cries out the words one last time, "I love you."_
> 
> _He holds her close even as he withdraws from her body. She doesn't try to pull away anymore; she knows it's no use. He wants to say it again, but he doesn't. Still, for all her sadness and for all that he's nearly lost every last shred of hope that she'll ever feel about him the way he feels about her, he loves her._

 

There were words for what he did to her--ugly words, words that had nothing to do with how he felt about her, words he refused to admit applied at all. How could they apply when what he shared with Willow had nothing to do with hate and violence?

They spent every day together; Angel often taking her to see the homes and collections of old friends of his, showing her beautiful sights that wouldn't give away their location. He was sad about it, but he still needed to keep her unsettled. Oh how he'd hoped it would be different by now, but it wasn't and he could not afford to be unrealistic. Willow was his because he kept her in chains. While those chains might not be strictly literal, they were still chains, and would have to remain…perhaps always.

Sometimes he wondered: Was it right? Holding Willow against her wishes? Robbing her of the chance to live a normal life? To find the love of her own choosing? To keep her with him even though she was so desperately miserable?

He had a soul…didn't he?

 

> _She's beautiful, his love, even as she sits at the edge of the bed, as far from him as she can get. There aren't any chairs in the room now; he took them away. At least this way, she can't isolate herself from him in a way he can't control._
> 
> _"What would you like to watch tonight?" He brings home any number of movies, but she never expresses a preference, never gives him any clues. He hopes one day to accidentally please her by finding a favorite of hers; she'd never be able to hide that from him. It hasn't happened yet. Tonight is not the first time he wishes he'd paid more attention to trivia back in Sunnydale, spent more time listening to the prattle of Willow and Buffy and Xander. He'd never thought it important then--to him it had been all about fighting evil. If only he'd known that someday he'd have a life where the little things mattered._
> 
> _He walks over to the shelf full of videos and picks one out at random. "It's a Wonderful Life." There's cruel irony in his selection, but for Angel at least, maybe it's not so ironic after all. Because he realizes, as he puts the video in and then carries the remote with him as he sits down beside Willow, that a life with her in it is all that he wants. He breathes in the scent of her hair and the salt-tang of her despair and pushes 'play'. _
> 
> _She shudders as he puts his arm around her; he doesn't move._

 

He did the best he could; wracking his brain for ideas of things she might like. Nothing he thought of was ever right. Naturally, much of that was simply her own obstinacy (and how could any choice he made ever overcome that?) but still, he kept trying.

The most beautiful clothes; rare first-editions; dolls that outshone any that Drusilla had ever owned…nothing made her happy. On rare occasions, she would plead for a computer, but he would never give in on that score. Whether she liked it or not, _he_ was the ruler of Willow's world and he would keep its boundaries narrow. She might be miserable, but he was still determined not to offer her any escape, even the escape of daydreams.

Maybe that was revenge, but tormented love might make a demon of any man.

 

> _"Make her love me," he begs, abasing himself before his childe in a way of which he has never thought himself capable. Even as he says it again -- screams it, in fact -- he hates himself._
> 
> _Drusilla, however, gives him nothing he expected. There's no sly smile, no coy attempts at seduction. Instead, she offers him what she has, meager though it is, by way of the fulfillment of his plea. This is one, he realizes, who he has finally shaped to his fancy._
> 
> _"I could make her believe she loves you for a little while…when you lie with her."_
> 
> _It's not enough, and it's nothing he sought, but at least it's Drusilla's subservience and that is something. If only it were an omen that his dream come true was in the offing, but it isn't. _
> 
> _Willow is his nightmare and always will be. He stops asking why he never wants to awaken._

 

Time might keep passing, and some things might change, but some things were as immune to time as he was. Willow still screamed and cried when he took her, though the fighting wasn't as violent as it once had been. She had learned that she couldn't win. What she didn't realize was that she hadn't kept _him_ from winning.

Perhaps he would have behaved differently if he hadn't been to Hell, he thought. But the fact that his soul had suffered for centuries in payment for crimes with which it had nothing to do made it hard for him to justify denying himself anything now. What did it matter, after all, when he was headed for the same lake of fire no matter what he did? Redemption had been a cruel trick, and the lie had burned away, leaving nothing but a demon with a man's desires and nothing to stop him from fulfilling them.

He wondered if he should tell Willow that it's Buffy she ought to hate and not him.

 

> _She's crying, not that her sorrow is at all unusual. Still, that never makes it less anguishing for Angel. He misses her smile, the sparkle in her eyes that came from joy and not tears. He wonders if he'll ever see that Willow again._
> 
> _Sometimes he wonders if that's even the Willow he fell in love with, though he likes to tell himself it is. What kind of monster would love the tearful, tormented girl who'd been created from that sweet, innocent naïf?_
> 
> _"Willow?" His voice is soft; he's trying, and failing miserably, to soothe her._
> 
> _She stares at him now, almost willing him to leave, trying to force him away with the agonized hatred in her eyes. Instead, he pulls her close. _
> 
> _"I hate you," she says plaintively, a plea for freedom. "I will always hate you."_
> 
> _"It doesn't matter." And in the end, he's being utterly truthful, because it doesn't. No matter how much suffering he endures because of this passion, he will never relinquish it, nor its object. "I love you."_

 

End Angel


	3. Part Three: Willow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel's soul is secure, but Willow remains.

Stopping Time: Part Three: Willow

 

It had been a year and somehow, while nothing really changed, everything kept getting worse. The pain, the fear, the isolation…it all hurt more every single day. And every single day she hated Angel with increasing intensity.

It didn't seem to matter, though, not to him. What Drusilla would gladly have given him willingly, he was more interested in taking from Willow.

 

> _"I love you." _
> 
> _The words punctuate each thrust of his cock into a body from which she wishes she could separate. She wants to torture and kill whoever invented lubricant. It makes it easy for Angel to invade her…easy for him to pretend it isn't rape._
> 
> _"I love you."_
> 
> _The words come more often. It's almost over. As much as she hates hearing him say what sounded sweet and beautiful in Oz's soft voice, at least this is a harbinger of something to which she can look forward--the end of a night's sexual degradation._
> 
> _"I love you."_
> 
> _It's a shout this time as he spills inside her, staining her with what she can only give thanks is as dead as he is. The thought of bearing the child of a monster such as he is nearly makes her vomit. _
> 
> _He doesn't say it again, but even as he pulls out of her, he pulls her to him and holds her close, an obscene masquerade of the afterglow she'd dreamed of sharing with Oz. _
> 
> _"I hate you," she whispers softly as tears roll down her cheeks. He says nothing as his lips brush against the back of her neck._
> 
> _This is the night when Willow looks into the Old Testament and can't find God._

 

Her saddest day came when she looked into the mirror and couldn't picture a girl in a pink sweater and a multi-coloured hat staring back at her. Instead, she saw a girl with dead eyes in a pale green blouse and a camel skirt, her dull auburn hair neatly brushing her shoulders. Willow -- the Willow worth being, at least -- was gone...and she was never coming back.

She didn't cry, though she wanted to so badly. She wondered why once and came close to realizing it was because grief meant acknowledging death before turning back on the road of her thoughts and staying wrapped in the safe warmth of confusion. There was so little heat in her world anymore; she could be forgiven for clutching tightly to what shabby blanket she could find.

 

> _"Why do you love him?" she asks Drusilla one day._
> 
> _"Why are the stars silent?" It could be an answer or a non sequitur. With Drusilla, there are no certainties, no words without layers of emptiness and mystery between them and meaning. _
> 
> _Willow waits for a while and there is nothing more. All she has is what her visitor gives her. Drusilla rises slowly, holding out her hand as if this is a ballroom and she's been asked to dance._
> 
> _"I'm sorry, Willow," she says as she glides out the door, the click of the lock echoing behind her. Willow should hate her--she doesn't, and that's another question that remains, full and hollow and forever lonely without its mate._

 

It was frustrating, never knowing where they were. Had she looked hard enough, she'd have seen tiny fragments of the old Willow in the furrow of her brow as she tried desperately to find clues, to ferret out the name of at least the country they were in at any given time -- not because she thought she could escape if she knew -- just because she wanted to _know_.

She still begged for a computer, even though she knew it was useless. It irritated Angel and that made it something more than futility. No matter what, she never forgot that she was at war with Angel. She couldn't win, of course -- she'd given up that foolish idea the first time he forced himself inside her -- but she could make his victory a Pyrrhic one, and that was the loftiest of all goals now.

 

> _"We're going shopping today. Won't that be fun?" Angel speaks to her as if she's a child. It would bother her were it not the least of his sins. As it stands, she wishes he *always* treated her like a child._
> 
> _"Yeah, whatever," she says dispiritedly. She doesn't actually need any new clothes; she hasn't needed any in ages. Of course, Angel rarely lets her wear the same thing twice. That would matter if the clothes didn't all look exactly the same to Willow anyway. How many shades of beige are there?_
> 
> _"It will do you good to get out for a bit." There's that tone again. He's addressing a fractious child. And what is she supposed to say to that? It's not as if it matters if she ever leaves this room. She's in prison, and just like in prison, how much difference is there between the yard and the cell? You're still a prisoner, no matter where you are._
> 
> _"I don't need any new clothes," she says, realizing as she crosses her arms over her chest that she is acting every bit the stubborn youngster his manner implies she is._
> 
> _He chuckles. "It's not about what you need. I love dressing you up, seeing how beautiful you are after all those years you spent stifled."_
> 
> _She starts laughing and she can't stop, not until her hysterics trap her in the prison of his embrace. Now she is stifled._

 

Of course, nothing compared in horror to the nights, or what she _thought_ of as the nights. Who knew what time it was here? Blacked-out windows and a vampire captor--even her trips to the homes of Angel's friends and the carefully-selected shops and sights did little to give her a sense of time to which she could hang on.

But whenever it was, once dinner was over and he led her to the scaffold that was her bed…that's when she realized that old saw about rape being a fate worse than death was no old-fashioned, patriarchal nonsense--it was as true as the shape of the world and the existence of evil.

 

> _He's inside her…again…forever. It never hurts less than it did the first time._
> 
> _"I love you." _
> 
> _Someday she hopes the words will become sounds, devoid of meaning and no longer an additional instrument of torture. But it hasn't happened so far. Even now, when Angel says them, they remind her of what she'll never have._
> 
> _"I love you."_
> 
> _He's slow tonight, some sick parody of tenderness, something he'll call 'making love' when it's over and she'll have to fight back the bile that will rise in her throat. His hands caress her as he thrusts._
> 
> _"Beautiful."_
> 
> _It's the new words, the changes in the routine, that make it impossible for her to numb herself, to focus on the rhythm and not the event. She knows he knows it; he's too skillful a demon to reveal his strategy, though, even as he deploys it. His are the eyes of a tormented innocent. She wonders if he ripped them from her sockets as she slept._
> 
> _"I love you."_
> 
> _Always it comes back to those three words. She lies beneath him and cries bitterly. It's now that she realizes that a Pyrrhic victory is still a victory to him, maybe even a greater one. If suffering is good for the soul, hers has polished his to diamond brightness, his own tears convincing him he's paying the toll for his sins even as he travels the road of cruelty._
> 
> _"I love you."_
> 
> _It's over…for now…and then it will happen again. This is a circle, a Catherine wheel, and the torture will never end._
> 
> _She looks into his eyes and she knows it's a mistake--there are tears there, tears he has no right to shed. But there they are, for all the injustice of it. He feels entitled to be loved by her, feels cheated of something due him, and she shatters, pieces of herself she didn't know she had left exploding into dust the way he never will._
> 
> _"I love you." _
> 
> _He whispers it one last time, his voice choked and aching. He strokes her cheek as he remains above her._
> 
> _Tonight is the last time she cries._

 

End Willow


End file.
